Another blow to "intelligent design"- Ancient Origins of the Human Eye Discovered

Another blow to "intelligent design"- Ancient Origins of the Human Eye Discovered

Scientists at the University of Hawaii at Manoa's Kewalo Marine Laboratory in Honolulu have discovered light-detecting cells in the embryo of a brachiopod, a marine invertebrate, whose organization may be similar to the primitive precursors of the human eye.

"This research provides a new model for understanding the very earliest stages of eye evolution, how simple cells on the surface of an animal could become able to respond to light, and how these simple cells could be connected to eventually form something as complex as the human eye," said Dr. Yale Passamaneck, lead author of the reserch team.

Researchers have long hypothesized that the complex human eye evolved from a very simple patch of cells on the surface of a primitive animal, slowly increasing in complexity by adding features such as pigmentation, a lens, and neuronal connections to the brain. To date, however, few examples similar to the earliest stages of this process have been identified.

Yale Passamaneck and Mark Martindale of Kewalo Marine Laboratory, along with colleagues in Germany and Norway, identified two distinct groups of light-detecting cells in the brachiopod embryo that may provide such examples. Both groups of cells contain light-sensitive cells called ciliary photoreceptors, the same type of cells that are responsible for light detection in the human eye.

9. Just a comment: this is a modern organism, so "ancient origin" has not been discovered.

But it is a proof of principle, that an organism can use a patch of light-sensitive cells to its advantage even without all the bells and whistles, such as neurons, lens, etc. This blows the "irreducible complexity" argument of the creationists..ehm...intelligent designists...out of the water, so to speak.

10. Are you going to start titling your space photo posts "Another blow to the theory that Earth rests

on the back of a very large turtle?"

It's just counter-productive to mention "Intelligent Design" in the context of scientific work: so-called "Intelligent Design" isn't a scientific theory -- it's an attempt by certain folk to dress up their philosophical prejudices in scientific-sounding language

Unless one were to find something like a "maker's" workshop or blueprints or trademark stamped on the products, there will be no scientific evidence for the "intelligent design." This is the present state of affairs, and it means that "intelligent design" is not now a scientific theory but rather speculative philosophy. Its proponents may like to dress it up in scientistic language, but that does not mean that they are doing science. Science seldom, if ever, sheds light on speculative philosophical questions: in particular, scientific information is unlikely to sway proponents of "intelligent design" -- they will simply be free to assert that any given scientific fact is beside the point

Meanwhile, anyone seriously interested in science wants to know facts about the natural world and how such facts can be compiled together into a coherent "map," preferably a "map" that has some predictive power: science is pursued for mastery of the natural world, not to credit or discredit speculative philosophical ideas. From this POV, speculative philosophy is a cul-de-sac, where one cannot obtain scientific insights

We have the exact same problem in our politics, which is that most people are not rational enough to make an informed decision. Instead, they rely upon authorities to tell them what to think, make judgments for or against the person presenting the facts rather than the information and arguments offered, and generally make a mess of things because they're so easily deceived.

They're constantly deceived, in fact, because their perception of the world is based upon a completly defective method of understanding it.

So with that in mind, the answer seems to lie in finding a way to punish right-wing leaders who refuse to tell their flocks what's really going on. It should be pointed out that the leaders are largely suckers, too. They can be deceived, ripped off, discredited, and relegated to church basements on Friday nights with relative ease compared to, say, a clever and greedy sociopath of the Cheney/Rove cut.

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